It may be helpful to think of this post as a recipe. One which results in a great finished blog post at the end, but first there are some concepts it’s important you understand.

Thought Leadership Ideas

Many blog posts on the Internet (perhaps most) reword what others have said before, and while there is nothing wrong with that, if what you’ve said has been said before (many times) why would anyone need to read your version?

If your site has a high Domain Authority, rewriting what others have said before can be very effective. Since your site ranks high, the individual posts on your site are likely to rank high.

When your site is new and has a low Domain Authority, that won’t work. You must “seed” your site with high-qualityy content others will link to.

That is where Thought Leadership comes in. The “key ingredient” of Thought Leadership Posts is analysis and perspective, backed up by data.

Storytelling Ideas

For this reason, the conclusions of your analysis which are supported by data are most effectively presented to others in the format of a story (which is sometimes hard to do).

So below we discuss two storytelling devices

The “but/therefore” Rule

This was created (or figured out) by the guys who created South Park (Trey Parker and Matt Stone). The basic idea is every story consists of various elements that are strung together. When different story elements connect with either the word “but” or the word “therefore”, the story is more engaging. When different story elements connect with other words, they audience starts to lose interest.

The Hero’s Journey

This is an idea from Joseph Campbell, a lifelong student and professor of mythology. From researching mythology from various human cultures, modern and ancient, he concluded there are 12 story elements to all the epic journey narratives throughout human history. Ever major epic includes most (but not necessarily all) of these elements.

How is this relevant to writing blog posts? In your blogs which are attempting to appeal to potential customers, it’s important to make THEM the hero of the story and to position yourself as the mentor. The Hero’s Journey provides you with a structured format with which to do that.

For more information about The Hero’s Journey, click the link above, but in summary, the 12 steps are:

The Ordinary World

The Call to Adventure

Refusal of the Call

Meeting with the Mentor

Crossing the Threshold

Tests, Allies, and Enemies

Approach

The Ordeal

The Reward

The Road Back

The Resurrection

Return with the Elixir

This general story arc occurs over and over and over again in the stories we tell and hand down for generations.

How the Ideas Above are Useful

Thought leadership is a format that: 1) helps position you as an expert in your field, by showcasing your high level perspective of your industry, and 2) provides analysis backed up by studies and data. Thought leadership posts tend to make good “link bait” which is to say they are articles that people want to share and link to.

The storytelling devices of “but/therefore” and The Hero’s Journey are ways of making your articles feel more relevant and be more memorable.

The next post describes how to build such a post in layers following a structured methodology. This increases the chances of people thinking it’s good and desiring to share it.